Father Time runs the best PR firm for restaurants; survive long enough and in the end, everyone just gets to hear of you. Look at Rules, Wilton’s, Sweetings, Simpson’s. Look at wonderful Oslo Court in St John’s Wood. And look at Grumbles, sat on Pimlico’s Churton Street since 1964.
Not quite as famous as those others, perhaps, but you can’t knock its popularity. Go in on any given weeknight — hell, go in on a Monday — and the place will be merrily crackling with regulars. Many are locals. This is one of those restaurants where a table might have three generations sat around it. It is a restaurant diners tend to like introducing others to, sharing it. I imagine some of the men who come have been coming since childhood; I imagine this is where bring their girlfriends to ask them to be their wives. It is a restaurant where most of those know the owner by name, even as that name has changed. At first it was Jeremy Friend, thirty years later it was Charles Tidman, and since 2011, Alexander Turnbull. And now you know his name, too.
